Call for a River's Revival / But many farmers don't want to lose water from Trinity

Eric Brazil, Chronicle Staff Writer

Published 4:00 am, Sunday, December 17, 2000

Nearly half a century ago, when the Trinity River was undammed and free- flowing, then-Rep. Claire Engle assured a group of worried Weaverville citizens that a plan to divert some water to the Central Valley wouldn't hurt Trinity County a bit.

The plan "does not contemplate diversion of one bucketful of water which is necessary in this watershed," the Red Bluff Democrat said. "The argument that it will ruin fishing is absolute nonsense."

It soon became clear that Engle was far too optimistic.

With the 1963 completion of the Trinity and Lewiston dams, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation began diverting up to 90 percent of the Trinity basin runoff -- about a million acre-feet a year -- to the Central Valley for irrigation and power generation.

On Tuesday, U.S. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt will announce a controversial new plan to undo the damage and restore the Trinity to its former splendor as one of the wildest and most productive waterways in California.

The plan intends to revive salmon and steelhead runs that have dwindled to 10 percent of their pre-dam numbers and turned one of the great Pacific Coast fisheries into an artificial tributary of the Sacramento River.

Babbitt will travel to the Hoopa Valley Indian Reservation in Trinity County to announce the new endeavor. While Central Valley farm interests and some power customers are seething, he can expect an enthusiastic welcome from the Hoopa Valley Tribe, whose reservation is bisected by the Trinity.

"We've been working for this for 20 years," said tribal Chairman Duane Sherman. "When I was a kid, we'd catch 30, 40, 50 salmon in a night. Now, me and my son and my daughter and my nephews, it took us three weeks to catch three fish."

DIVERSIONS TO BE REDUCED

The plan -- officially, a record of decision -- is to reduce diversions from the Trinity Division of the Central Valley Project by nearly 25 percent, increasing the minimum flow in the Trinity River from 340,000 acre-feet to 600, 000 acre-feet in an average year. Simultaneously, a project will begin to reshape the river's main stem to handle the additional flow and provide salmon and steelhead spawning beds.

The Trinity River restoration project -- a collaborative effort by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Bureau of Reclamation, the Hoopa Valley Tribe and Trinity County -- may be the Clinton administration's last big-ticket environmental initiative.

"This is a unique and very exciting opportunity to take a river system and put all the focus on it and see if we can bring it back," said Deputy Undersecretary of the Interior David Hayes.

"This is a very stark factual situation, where you had before 1955 one of the healthiest rivers in California and one of the most productive salmon runs and then with diversion the river withered and declined ," Hayes said. "There's no exact precedent for what we are trying to do."

CONTROVERSIAL ENDEAVOR

The ambitious Trinity River restoration project is also unarguably one of the administration's most controversial.

Central Valley Project farmers, notably those in the Westlands irrigation district, and major power customers, such as the Sacramento Municipal Utilities District, regard Babbitt's decision as irresponsible and are poised to fight its implementation in court.

The utilities district has lodged a 25-page critique of the project, calling it poorly thought out and probably illegal.

Westlands served notice on Friday in U.S. District Court in Fresno that it intends to sue to block implementation of Babbitt's decision on the grounds that federal officials have failed to assess its full environmental impact. Judge Oliver W. Wanger assured the district that it has the standing to mount a legal challenge to the project.

The utilities district stands to lose 250 megawatts of power, enough to meet the needs of 31,000 households a year -- if the Interior Department's plan is implemented -- and the replacement cost of that power is $24 million, said Brian Jobson, the utility's chief power contract officer.

He calls for a compromise "win-win solution" that would restore some water to the Trinity but reduce the impact on the utility district's power customers.

Westlands, the 550,000-acre irrigation district in Fresno and Kern counties on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley, is a principal user of water exported from the Trinity and figures to be most heavily impacted by the restoration decision.

Westlands received less than the amount of water it has contracted for from the Central Valley Project over the past decade, and its farmers have had to fallow land as a consequence, said General Manager Tom Birmingham.

The Bureau of Reclamation "has paid little attention to the impact on water users and the generation of hydro power," Birmingham said.

UNPOPULAR MOVE

Birmingham also acknowledged that anticipation of the Trinity River decision is one reason that Westlands has taken the radical step -- unpopular with its agricultural peers -- of suing for a share of the runoff that furnishes irrigation water for farmers on the Central Valley's east side.

Hayes rejects the allegations that his department has ignored input from agriculture and utilities that the Trinity decision poses irrigation and power- generation problems.

"We have been talking publicly about the Trinity River with them for two years," he said. "They know all that. . . . These issues are difficult, but the main thing is, are we going to restore this river?"

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